my thunderbird does not appear to be using back-shell's
searchexample.sh..?
i have compiled openldap on a desktop windows xp machine with the
back-shell backend enabled without threads.
slapd.conf is configured as suggested in the file searchexample.conf
at http://tinyurl.com/47t9ets. i have added the file
searchexample.sh from http://tinyurl.com/4823rtf in the appropriate
directory. i start up slapd, /usr/local/libexec/slapd -d 256 -h
ldap://localhost and it appears to fire up:
$ /usr/local/libexec/slapd -d 256 -h ldap://localhost
@(#) $OpenLDAP: slapd 2.4.24 (Feb 14 2011 09:29:58)

[...]
You should read the manual page slapd-shell(5) for guidance.

yes, i have visited and read this page prior to posting. however, i am
still at a loss and confused.

perhaps i am seeing the role of the /etc/passwd file in the sample shell
script incorrectly: if one's back-shell setup was working correctly,
should one be able to utilize the sample searchexample.sh file+an
/etc/passwd file to feed an ldap client application such as thunderbird
possible recipient entries? is so, where might i be going awry?

my current goal is the following: get slapd to run with a shell
backend and thunderbird on my local desktop. our team's overall goal
is to enable this setup on a linux server: we'd like to eliminate our
ldap server and utilize this slapd+back-shell mechanism to access our
oracle db for our ldap clients. once we are able to get this all
working with back-shell, we'd like to replace the shell role with php
scripts. any guidance on this task in general is greatly appreciated.

[...]
If you really want to access a sql database and relay the results to
ldap you should test with back-sql(5), there are test suites in the
source code servers/slapd/back-sql/rdbms_depend

yes, prior to examining the back-shell option, i extensively researched
the back-sql option; back-sql was my first choice. unfortunately, my
supervisor currently favors the back-shell (or even -perl, which a
teammate is researching) backend solution.